


Last Evening

by Vertiga



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-11
Updated: 2013-03-11
Packaged: 2017-12-05 00:00:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/716553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vertiga/pseuds/Vertiga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fragment of original work written a long time ago. I have no idea where I was going with it so it can't be finished, but I rediscovered it and loved the language, so I'm posting it anyway. Feel free to ignore it if introspection isn't your thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Evening

The last evening begins, as so many do, with an argument. They object to my flinging myself into the unknown, even in the small fashion of taking a train to Cardiff without checking when the last train home will leave. 

I am buzzing, my veins feel as though they are full of caffeine, but I know I haven’t drunk any coffee. It is His influence, that unearthly man I so recently met without ever meeting. I am beginning to feel strange, and it is because of Him that I insist on going to Cardiff at such short notice. I intend to go alone, but They insist I call others, try to find some company on my little quest. 

How enclosed and stifled has my life become that a single evening in a city barely fifty miles away seems like an adventure? Once I knew wider vistas, wilder visions, but it has been months since my routine varied just this little bit. I am no Ulysses. Not in body, at least. My mind still walks towards Orleans, along the Scottish coast and in and out of worlds of my own creation. It is my mind He calls, and I answer. 

My first calls go unheard, but when I dial She answers. She will meet me there, and They are mollified by this, and by my assurance that the last train will not leave for a good hour after I intend to return.

My hand shakes as I buy my ticket with money I don’t have. I don’t have a railcard either, but they never check, do they? The train is loud, but the music in my ears is louder. Tchaikovsky goes to a party with Horner and Howard and Shore, and as I lean against the luggage rack, feeling the weight on my knees as I shift, there are pictures dancing across the window. 

The city gives way to green fields outside. A man lies dying in red earth, but he is happier than I am. A grey ship sails out into a calm bay, bitter-sweet. We pass into the dark under the river. A woman in white dances agony and ecstasy on a black stage, and above the real music I remember another tune by someone else, and see another swan dance. 

I envy the depth of feeling, the true tragedy and glory of other lives that never existed. Why, when we can imagine dragons and sentient trees and a mage who sings her spells to the lightning, is our real world so unrelentingly pedestrian? I long for a deeper truth, for glory or a chance to experience the extremes of endurance, even as I know in my heart that I would not be a hero. I would break under such pressures as I envy and I despise myself for the knowledge. Not since Samwise has a fat simpleton risen to greatness. Heroes are thin and wire-hard. My kind are demonised by the society which creates us.


End file.
